This AI Startup Constantly Monitors Kids To Stop The Next School Shooting—And It Just Scored $16 Million Funding

Cybersecurity
I cover crime, privacy and security in digital and physical forms.

Surveillance technology is spreading across schools.Getty

Right now artificially intelligent software is rifling through hundreds of thousands of emails flying around Google’s Gmail service. Called Auditor, it uses natural language processing and AI to look out for signs of distress and cyberbullying, with the intent to prevent children harming another or themselves.

It’s the product of Securly, which is announcing a $16 million Series B round of funding on Tuesday, led by Defy Partners. The company has raised $24 million to date and claims to be keeping kids safe across 2,000 paid school districts. It’s eventual aim? To end one of America’s biggest blights: school shootings.

Securly CEO and cofounder Vinay Mahadik told Forbes the startup, set up in 2013, constantly thinks about the balance between security and privacy, but found there was strong demand despite the ramifications of a product suite that constantly monitors thousands of children 24/7. “There’s just so much societal and regulatory anxiety around what’s happening, particularly in the U.S.,” Mahadik said. “Schools and parents are dying for a solution that allows them to be in touch with kids a little more than they had to 10 years ago.

“We have been walking through the fine line between privacy and security but have not really faced any backlash, rarely ever.”

Stopping the next school shooting?

Mahadik set up Securly with engineer Bharath Madhusudan in 2013. Both had backgrounds in cybersecurity, having spent chunks of their working lives at industry giant McAfee.

The same year Securly was founded, Mahadik had his first child. He says that both his entrepreneurial and paternal instincts combined to help create the business. After Madhusudan built the original Filter product, Auditor arrived and a 24/7 monitoring service for schools. Parents can also buy the tech for the home.

As Securly grows with its new funding, Mahadik is thinking about what technologies could make their way into schools without jeopardizing children’s privacy. He imagines a kind of Alexa-like system, wherein the AI could be asked to provide specific information or surveillance footage. “You could say show me something that happened on the playground where a bunch of kids punched or kicked a certain kid,” he said. “If you can avoid personally identifying kids and handle the data responsibly, some tech like this could be beneficial.

“You could potentially preempt the next shooting incident in the U.S.”